


Breath

by themegalosaurus



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Hurt Dean Winchester, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 12:21:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2191665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themegalosaurus/pseuds/themegalosaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Did somebody say slow burn? Written for the spn_masquerade first round, The Beggar's Banquet, to the prompt: 'On a routine hunt, Dean almost drowns. Sam has to perform CPR. Dean can't remember almost dying, all he can remember is the feel of Sam's lips on his, the feel of his breath in Dean's mouth, and it's obsessing him.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breath

**Author's Note:**

> I intended this as a chapter fic but... here we are several years later. And actually I think it works fine as a stand-alone.

Dean gasps back into life with a throbbing ribcage, a cough of dirty water and the tingling memory of his brother's lips on his. Sam's face is pale above him, wide-eyed and frantic, long strands of hair dripping wet against Dean's skin. "Oh thank God," he says, when he hears Dean splutter. "Dean. Oh. I thought you were dead."

Dean pants, lungs rasping and painful. He can feel the cold, solid dampness of soil at his back; hear the rustle of the lake as it breathes beside them. He's not sure, yet, what happened - but it must have been a real close thing, because Sammy is nearly in tears, eyes red and hands shaking visibly as he pats them carefully across Dean's chest. As his palm touches high on the right-hand side there's a sudden, sharb jab and Dean gasps, sending Sam flinching guiltily back on his heels. "I think I broke your rib," he says.

"It's OK," Dean says. "Better battered than drowned."

Sam forces out a laugh that sounds more like a sob.

It's a good twenty minutes before Sam will let him sit up, longer before he helps him to stand and they hobble awkward and clinging back to the car. Dean's ankle is sprained, or twisted, and Sam takes the driver's seat: speeding them silently back to the motel with Dean sitting stiff by his side. The mud is starting to crust, now, across Dean's cheek, and his rib jolts painful and electric with every bump in the road. His foot throbs, swollen and icy and bare. But through and over all of the discomfort, he's flushed with an insistent thought: Sam's mouth warm on his, Sam's breath huffing into his throat.

Dean looks over at his brother's profile, outlined delicate against the dark of the window. Sam swallows, and Dean watches the movement of his neck. He's tense with the urge to reach out and taste it, to run his tongue over the prickle of Sam's stubbled jaw. What the fuck, Dean thinks. What the fuck.

Back at the motel Dean's delirium isn't helped by Sam's determination to help peel him out of his shirt. Both of them are soaked through, clothes heavy with dirt and damp, and the pain in Dean's side makes it almost impossible for him to manoeuvre. So it makes sense that Sam should step in, running his hands careful and soft down the length of Dean's arm as he strips off his sleeve. It makes sense that after he should tip Dean back on the bed, palm on his chest to keep him still, holding an ice pack over the darkening bruise. What doesn't make sense is Dean's hammering heart and the way Sam's touch seems to linger on his skin.

"Painkillers," says Sam shortly, moving away, pressing Dean's own hand over the ice at his side. He burrows into his duffel, comes out with a plastic pill bottle and rattles it in Dean's direction. "These should knock you out."

Yes, Dean thinks, that's probably a good idea. Take a couple of serious tranqs and when he comes round some time tomorrow, his body will have forgotten this new obsession with his brother's breath. He's just confused, shaken up by the near-death experience. That's all. Tomorrow, the thoughts will be gone. So he obediently gulps down the capsules Sam passes him, wriggles back onto his pillow, closes his eyes and falls asleep.

When Dean wakes up, for a moment he's back at the lake: Sam bending over him, brow wrinkling in anxiety. Dean opens his mouth, silent, wanting. "Sorry, man," says Sam, pulling back and away. "But you've been sleeping for, like, fifteen hours. I was starting to worry I'd given you too big of a dose."

Dean blinks slowly, gathering his thoughts. "No," he says. "I'm OK." But his head is still fuzzy, and he can tell from Sam's narrow-eyed look that he's making it obvious. "Maybe a little spacey," he concedes.

Sam nods. "You OK to sleep in the car?"

"What?" asks Dean. "We got somewhere we need to be?"

Sam looks uncomfortable. "Bobby called," he says. "There's a hunt two states over. Could be a werewolf, sounds like. And full moon's coming up."

"Great," says Dean, with as much enthusiasm as he can force through his exhaustion. "Lead the way, Sammy." And he is pleased, really; keeping busy sounds like a plan right now. The more he's worried about supernatural beasties trying to off him, the less time he's gonna have to think about the way in which Sam's distinctive and familiar scent is catching at something deep inside his belly.

It's a long ride to Indiana, though, and Sam refuses to let him drive. That's fine for a while - Dean dozes happily for at least three or four hours - but by the time it hits seven o'clock and the sun starts to sink, he's wide awake again and those thoughts just keep on wandering. Sam's quiet, focused on the road, some kind of talk show filtering through the radio. He hasn't really noticed Dean stir; so Dean takes the opportunity, gazes at him, drinks it in.

"Sam?" he says, at last.

Sam looks over at him, smiles. "Hey," he says. "You doin' OK?"

"Peachy," says Dean. "But, Sam."

Sam waits.

"You planning on telling me the detail of what happened last night? You manage to kill that thing and rescue me all at the same time?"

"Oh," Sam says. He fixes his eyes carefully in front of him. "Um... yeah, I guess. I mean. It pulled you under so quickly I didn't have much time to think, you know? Thank God we brought the two harpoons. Yours just... I think as soon as it got you, you just let go? Which is probably good, I mean, otherwise you'd have ended up skewered through the leg, or something. But yeah. The boat nearly tipped over when it yanked you out, but... it was kind of thrashing you around. Do you really not remember this? I was waiting and it was too long, man, it had you under water for such a long time. I didn't know whether to jump in or what. I was thinking about it. But then it came back up, I saw it right there under the surface and I managed to get a good angle and I just... you know. Straight through the top of the spine. I was so worried I was gonna spear you too."

Sam takes in a deep breath. Dean watches his chest rise and fall.

"Anyway it wriggled like a sonuvabitch but it let you go. I don't know how much water you must have swallowed but, dude, it was a lot. You didn't exactly float to the top. I had to dive down and grab you. And then... the boat had gone floating off in the wrong direction. So I swum us both to shore."

"And when we got there, I wasn't breathing?"

Sam shudders. When he speaks, his voice is thick. "No. You weren't."

Dean knows he should leave it at this point, stop picking at the scab, but he can't. "So you..."

The prompt seems to draw Sam out of the re-lived memory of the night before. He furrows his forehead, glances at Dean. "I gave you CPR. And cracked your rib." There's a heavy pause. "Is that what this is about, Dean?"

"Nah, man, I told you already, better a broken rib than two lungs full of water."

"Not the rib, the... the other bit. Are you pissed at me for giving you the kiss of life?"

Dean pushes out a laugh. "Huh. No. Sam. Don't make this weird. It's, like, a medical procedure. Or something. Kiss of life. Let's just call it CPR."

Sam's getting annoyed. "That's what I _was_ calling it. I can't believe that out of that whole horrible set of events, _that's_ what you choose to fixate on. Jesus, Dean. I didn't have much of a choice. It wasn't like I was making a move on you. I was trying to keep you alive."

"Yeah, alright," Dean says. He can feel his cheeks heating up. "No need to be a bitch about it, Sammy. Christ." It's too late, though; the atmosphere's fractured, tense. Sam was confiding in him, exposing his fear (exposing his love): and Dean's managed to make it something dirty and petty and cheap. 'I wasn't making a move on you'. No. Of course.

They've been driving in sullen silence for another two hours when they pass a roadside diner and Sam pulls up.

"We should eat," he says. He doesn't wait for Dean to reply before he's out of the car, long legs stalking towards the glow of the low little building. Dean scrambles after him.

Sam's already sliding into a seat when Dean catches up, his legs slow and wobbly from the remnants of the pills and the sleep. He blinks in the light and slips down on to the plastic of the booth. Sam skates a peeling laminated menu across the table towards him. He still won't meet Dean's eyes.

"Sammy -"

Sam sighs. "Save it, Dean. It's fine. It was just a shitty, horrible hunt and I don't want to talk about it any more."

Dean shuts up. He orders his burger and Sam orders his salad, and they sit there quietly in the near-empty room. Sam looks out of the window into the dark where the Impala sits. Dean looks at Sam. He watches the fork travel from the plate to Sam's mouth; watches Sam's lips close around it, sees the metal slide out. He watches the movement of Sam's jaw as he chews. When the tip of Sam's pink tongue flicks out, mopping up an invisible speck, something squeezes tight at Dean's lungs. Jesus, Dean thinks. This has to stop. But he can't stop; can't tear his eyes away. He thinks about the texture of Sam's tongue on his.

"Do you want to get a room?" says Sam.

For a moment Dean is horrified, thrilled, lit up by visions of naked flesh. Then he remembers himself.

"There's a motel just over the road," Sam says, "and you're still kind of beat."

Dean frowns. "What about the werewolf?"

"We got a couple of days til full moon and we can't finish the drive today: I'm not letting you behind the wheel until you've had another night's sleep. And I'm running on pretty much empty, myself."

"OK," Dean says. "Sure. Whatever you want."

Sam looks suspicious but he can't complain; so they hoik their stuff from the trunk of the car to the no-name motel across the street, checking in to a first-floor room with faded fern-patterned walls. Sam swings his stuff down onto the bed and heads in for a shower. He takes his time. Dean knows what it's like: the days when the heat of the water is the closest thing to comfort you'll find. By the time Sam emerges he's pink and steaming, dark hair damp and tousled, T-shirt clinging to his still-wet skin. Dean glances up from the car magazine he's been staring at blindly for the past twenty minutes. The V of Sam's shirt exposes his collarbone, the drops collecting in the hollow of his throat.

Sam steps towards Dean, perches himself beside him on the bed. "How's the rib?" he says. "Let me see."

Unthinking, Dean flinches away. "I'm not going to poke at it or anything," Sam says, hurt. "I just want to see how it looks." He leans over, takes ahold of Dean's hem. Looks up.

Dean shrugs, trying for carefree. "Go ahead," he says. "Enjoy the show."

A momentary frown crosses Sam's face before he rolls his eyes, juts his chin, and rolls up Dean's shirt. The bruise from the day before has darkened, deepened; there's a nasty yellowing gradient all around it, extending out and around Dean's side. "Jeez," says Sam. "I'm sorry. This must hurt like a bitch."

"Yeah, well," says Dean. "Don't think I'm gonna let you roofie me again. I'm still hazy from what I took last night."

"Sorry," Sam says, again. "I must have given you a pill too much. I just wanted to make sure you'd sleep."

"Look at me," Dean says. "I'm beautiful. Sleeping Beauty. Of course I can sleep." He's not quite prepared for it when Sam does look at him, though; a serious gaze that moves up from his wounded chest to settle, appraising, on his face. Sam's expression is unreadable, intent. Dean squirms under the weight of it.

He can't stop his brain from imagining that Sam might kiss him. It would be so easy. Sam could just bend down, tip that trim waist and lower his face towards Dean's; could brush their lips together and mean it, this time, for real. Oh God. Dean is suddenly dizzy with lust. He's conscious of the discomfort of his jeans around his crotch. Don't look down, Sam, he thinks.

Sam doesn't look down, thank God; he keeps his eyes trained on Dean's face for a long few minutes before finally blinking and looking away. There's a tight set to his jaw and his voice wavers a little when he says, "Well. I'm glad you're OK." Then he stands up, and the moment's gone.

Dean doesn't bother with a shower himself, just shuffles off the jeans - when he can do it safely - and wriggles down into the scratchy, shiny, staticky motel sheets. Sam is already tucked under on the other bed, and he doesn't move or look around when Dean reaches to flick off the light. Dean can hear him breathing, even but maybe not deep or slow enough to signal sleep. He wonders what Sam is thinking.

It's strange, lying here like this; the distance of a few feet between them in the soft of the night. It's strange that they're two grown-up brothers still sharing a room. It's stranger still that they, both of them, need it; that they don't really jostle each other or string out each other's nerves in the way that most adult siblings might in such continual proximity. But strangest of all is the way that they can both lie still and think in secrets from one another. Sam could have anything inside his head and Dean never would know. And Sam, on his side, would surely never suspect this increasingly feverish hunger in Dean.

Thing is, now it's begun, Dean has no way of stopping the train that's inside him, of pulling up short and returning himself to the place where Sam's mouth was just that: the vehicle for Sam's whining and his jabbing, jokey opinions; a machine for consuming salad and spitting out sass. The moment on the shore of the lake, Sam breathing life back into his lungs, has shifted something fundamental. The movement is tiny, but hugely significant: a whole row of tumblers falling finally into place. Dean doesn't think he has the strength, or the will, to wrench them back out of alignment.

In the middle of the night, Dean rolls onto his side and the twinge of pain that shoots through it shocks him awake. Maybe he should have taken those painkillers after all. He lies for a while trying to get back to sleep, but it's not gonna happen: the rib is pulsing with a niggling ache. So he sighs, swings out of bed and pads over to the bathroom, looking for the pain pills Sam left out last night. If he takes just one (rather than the overgenerous three Sam gave him), it probably won't knock him out too bad.

Dean finds the little bottle easily, knocks back a pill with a handful of water, and turns to step back into the room. He's brought up short by what he sees. The light from the bathroom is shining a tilted, yellow-tinged rectangle over Sam's bed. For once, Sam's fast asleep, outstretched on his front; his left arm sprawled across the empty pillow, the right one tucked against his chest. Drained of its usual tension and anxiety, his face looks very young. His mouth is slightly open: an invitation.

Without thinking, Dean crosses over to the bed, reaching his hand towards Sam's face. He stops his fingers millimetres from Sam's lips; close enough to feel Sam's breath moving warm and damp against them. That's it. But the soft sensation is enough in itself to send prickles of guilty arousal over his skin. He feels like if he were to lick his own fingertips, he might be able to taste Sam's mouth on their surface; tiny particles carried across on the air. Dean doesn't do that. He just stands there and aches with desire.

He's not sure how long he holds that position; it might be two minutes, five, fifteen. His whole world narrows down to the ends of his fingers, to the ebb and the flow of Sam's breath. But though the moment dilates and expands, it can't last forever. Eventually, Sam moves - just a little, shifting his shoulders and sliding his arm further underneath him.

Dean jumps away like something has bitten him, nearly tripping over his own feet as his back smacks into the wall. His heart pounds. All the tension of that secret encounter runs through his body like bubbling liquid, leaving his knees trembling and his cock pulsing urgent and painful for relief. He stumbles back into the bathroom, blinking in the light that he never turned off, clicks the door closed as quiet as he can do it and jacks himself, fiercely, hunched over the sink. He's coming in less than a minute, biting hard on his lip, a tiny, muted noise escaping through his tight-clenched teeth.

When Dean pads back into the room, it's in the dark. He lies flat on his back on his bed and drifts off listening to the near-silent sounds of Sam's sleep.


End file.
